Comparison of different buncher cavity designs for the 4GLS ERLP

A DC photocathode gun is part of the injector of the Energy Recovery Linac Prototype (ERLP) presently being built at Daresbury Laboratory. A buncher is required for the ERLP downstream of the photocathode gun to decrease the relatively long bunches (20-30ps) from the GaAs cathode. Three different single-cell cavity designs were investigated: the Cornell buncher, the ELBE buncher and an EU cavity without Higher Order Mode (HOM) dampers. The properties of these cavities were studied with the computer codes CSTs Microwave Studio and ASTRA. The fundamental frequency and field pattern of each buncher was investigated in Microwave Studio. The EU cavity was scaled from 500MHz to the required frequency for the buncher of 1.3GHz. As the anticipated kinetic energy of the electron beam after the gun is about 350keV a particle tracking code including the space charge forces is mandatory to study the effect of the different buncher cavity designs on the beam dynamics. The particle tracking code ASTRA was used to study the performance of the bunchers for a variety of beam parameters. From these investigations it was found that the three bunchers produce very similar effects on the particle bunch.